Peer-Coaching Plan Approved in San Diego

San Diego Superintendent Alan D. Bersin and the local teachers'
union reached agreement last week on a plan that will put trainers of
teachers in most of the district's schools.

It was a solution to a problem that had bedeviled the district for
months, solved just in time for the trainers to make it into the
schools during the coming year. But the compromise almost certainly
does not spell an end to the union's growing discontent with a schools
chief who is bent on rapid reform.

For months, the question of who should pick the trainers was a bone
of contention between the district and the San Diego Education
Association, which represents the city's 8,000 teachers. Early this
month, about 2,000 teachers rallied outside district headquarters,
protesting a "top down" management style and urging the school board to
favor the union's plan for selecting the trainers.

Under a proposal advanced by Mr. Bersin and Anthony Alvarado, the
district's chief academic officer, teachers would have become eligible
for the peer-coaching job only after passing a special course approved
by the district. Union officials wanted selection more squarely in the
hands of local school councils, which include faculty, staff members,
and parents.

In the end, the district basically accepted the union's position
after some safeguards of coach quality were added to the selection
process.

The issue had become emblematic of the struggle between the union
and the take-charge Mr. Bersin, who stepped down as the chief federal
prosecutor in San Diego 10 months ago to take the top post in the
137,000-student district. ("San
Diego's New Chief an Unlikely Pick," March 18, 1998.)

The selection of Mr. Bersin as one of the few noneducators to run a
big-city district and his hiring of Mr. Alvarado, a nationally known
former New York City administrator, have made San Diego one of the most
closely watched districts in the country.

The two men have made the teacher coaches a pivotal part of a broad
improvement plan that has also included creation of a three-hour
"literacy block" for reading and writing in elementary schools and
downsizing the central administration. That effort is expected to yield
an annual savings of $8.5 million in an operating budget that next year
will approach $900 million.

Mr. Alvarado, who headed New York City's Community School District 2
for 12 years before coming to San Diego last July and had earlier
served as chancellor of the citywide system, brought with him a
reputation for raising reading test scores among minority children.

He and others link the improvement to a relentless focus on teacher
development.

Plan B

But union officials in San Diego say changes are being forced on
teachers, who feel shut out of the planning.

"It's a very top-down, disrespectful management style, which does
not honor the expertise of teachers," Marc W. Knapp, the president of
the National Education Association affiliate, asserted in an interview
before the agreement. "Teachers turned out [at the rally] because of
disrespect."

The conflict drew the attention of high-level community leaders, who
worry that school reform in the city will founder. After the union
declared an impasse with the district last month, the president of San
Diego State University, Stephen Weber, volunteered to mediate the
deadlock.

In the negotiations that followed, the university's school of education
offered to oversee the design of a peer-coach certification program and
to independently certify its graduates. That offer came as a response
to complaints by union officials that teachers approved for the jobs by
the district's new Institute for Learning, the academic arm of the
administration headed by Mr. Alvarado, would not have credibility as
coaches.

Instead, union leaders said, the teachers would be viewed as
evaluators and critics sent by the administration.

Meanwhile, district officials had prepared for unilateral action.
They had said that if they couldn't reach a compromise with the union,
which by law is needed to create a new job category, they would hire
trainers under another name.

To that end, the school board in a 3-2 vote last month approved a
plan to add 85 "curriculum resource" teachers, who would train teachers
to help students with subpar reading skills.

Teachers said the hires would be a violation of their
contract.

Deteriorating Relations

Almost from the beginning, the Bersin-Alvarado team has rankled
teachers and union officials. While Mr. Bersin and some civic leaders
assert that there's no time to lose in turning around underachieving
schools, Mr. Knapp and many teachers say the furious pace has mainly
served to alienate them.

"It was culture shock," the union president said. "Teachers walked
in the first day, especially the elementary teachers, and were told,
'Throw out everything you've done before. This is the way we're doing
it,' with no explanation or understanding."

Mr. Knapp says the largely collaborative relationship built with
former Superintendent Bertha O. Pendleton in the wake of a week-long
1996 strike over pay is disappearing.

Richard M. Daniels, the head of communications for the district,
said that the top leaders believe they have been cooperative, but that
Mr. Bersin must act on a "mandate from the community to improve student
achievement" or lose community support.

The school board president, Edward Lopez, agreed. "At a certain
point," he said, the question becomes "at what point do you push on
even if you don't have agreement?"

Many inside and outside the system sympathize with the teachers, but
agree that the time for action has come. People are "anxious and
uneasy," said Debra A. Rinehart, the president of the San Diego Unified
Council of PTAs. "But I think possibly we don't have a moment to
lose."

John W. Johnson, the president and chief executive officer of the
San Diego Urban League, also called for swift reform, and said minority
children may have the most to gain. "I strongly feel that [Mr. Bersin
and Mr. Alvarado] have the right to be able to put in their own plans,"
he said, "without watering them down because of some other element,
such as the union."

Despite the burdens imposed by the changes, some educators
interviewed last week support the direction the district is taking.
"I'm overwhelmed," said Elaine Arm, the principal of Central Elementary
School, "and I'm still saying we're going in the right direction."

This transcript of a February 1999 question-and-answer
session between teachers and Superintendent Bersin conveys some of
the tension between teachers and the administration. From the San Diego
City Schools Communications Department.

The NEA gives some background on the
San Diego teachers' union relationship with the district, as an example
of "new unionism."

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